A movie that I’m worried might slip under too many radars is “Midwinter Break”, a deeply human adult drama that could sell itself solely on its two stars, Lesley Manville and Ciarán Hinds. And while Manville and Hinds are every bit as wonderful as we expect, there’s so much more to connect with and absorb in Polly Findlay’s extraordinary directorial debut. And it will stick with you well after the credits roll.

“Midwinter Break” has the look of an easygoing relationship drama, and in a way it is. But it doesn’t take long to realize Findlay has much more on her mind. As we tag along with married couple Stella (Manville) and Gerry (Hinds) on a vacation in Amsterdam, we witness the film’s rich themes making their way to the surface. And as they do, Findlay patiently explores them through the couple’s seemingly sweet relationship as well as their individual struggles, which both have kept buried for years.

Based on the 2017 novel of the same name by Bernard MacLaverty. “Midwinter Break” tells a story that’s likely to resonate with anyone who has been married for some time. From one insightful angle, it looks at the long-lasting impact of trauma and how it can set the course for someone’s life. But it also looks at the complexity of relationships. Findlay captures the joy of growing old with someone you love, but also the absolute necessity of communication.

Stella and Gerry have had a long and loving life together. Their early days as an Irish couple was marked by a traumatic incident during The Troubles that could have turned tragic. But they endured, even though the event certainly left some scars. They moved from Belfast to Glasgow where Stella became a teacher and Gerry an architect. They had a son Michael who is now off with his own family, leaving them to enjoy the later years of their lives.

But the more we observe the more we notice details that point to deeper frustrations. For example, Stella is devoutly religious which is quite the contrast to the much more skeptical Gerry who rarely skips a chance to rib her about her faith. Then there is Gerry’s drinking which is much worse than he’s willing to admit. Hoping to give their marriage a jolt, Stella surprises an enthusiastic Gerry with a trip to Amsterdam.

As they enjoy the city’s beautiful sites and unique personality, Stella and Gerry learn they can’t escape their individual internal crisis. It comes to a head once Stella opens up about her feelings, setting up the film’s poignant second half. It’s here that Findlay casts a new light on their relationship which reveals new layers to each character. Manville and Hinds navigate it all with such moving authenticity. There’s not a false note to be found in their performances.

Findlay allows it all to play out deliberately and organically to the point that some might consider it slow-moving. But that’s hardly the case. Every scene, no matter how trivial or mundane it may seem on its own, is revealing in some way and is presented with purpose. Findlay reveals so much detail in the ‘small’ moments. And as more plays out before our eyes, the clearer the portrait of their marriage becomes.

“I’m married. Although I’m not sure how much marriage we have left in us.” Stella’s heartbreaking confession hits like a ton of bricks, much like “Midwinter Break” as a whole. It’s a movie that’s not afraid to deal earnestly and honestly with its themes, while treating an underserved adult audience the kind of offering they rarely get these days. It’s intimate, nuanced, emotionally textured, and remarkably restrained. Altogether, it makes “Midwinter Break” the first must-see drama of 2026.

VERDICT – 4.5 STARS

“The Mortuary Assistant” attempts to follow in the footsteps of “Five Nights at Freddy’s” and more recently “Iron Lung” by adapting a small indie horror video game to the big screen. While those two films were surprising box office successes, it may be a tougher road for “The Mortuary Assistant” which is expected to get a limited theatrical release before streaming on Shudder starting March 27th.

“The Mortuary Assistant” video game came out in 2022 and was primarily developed by Brian Clarke’s one-person studio, DarkStone Digital. It had a low budget and a small scale, but it was well-received by players and critics. The movie adaptation is somewhat similar – modest budget and small in scope. Director Jeremiah Kipp does some good things with a film that’s certain to register more with fans of the game. Others might struggle to make sense of it all.

The film’s biggest strength is Willa Holland. She plays Rebecca Owens, a young woman whose life has been marked by trauma. Yet she has found victory in her struggles. She’s a recovering alcoholic who is celebrating one year of sobriety. And she’s nearing the end of an internship for a job she’s surprisingly enthusiastic about – a mortuary assistant. But unfortunately for her, this is a horror movie, which means everything in her world is about to be turned upside-down.

After successfully embalming her final supervised procedure, her boss Raymond Delver (Paul Sparks) welcomes Rebecca to a full-time position at River Fields Mortuary. The peculiarly adamant Raymond assigns her the day shift while he insists on handling nights. But after Raymond calls Rebecca to fill in for him, she finds herself thrust into a terrifying situation, locked inside the mortuary overnight with corpses being reanimated by demonic entities. Yikes.

It’s certainly a promising premise and (to his credit) Kipp squeezes everything he can from it. The fittingly chilling mortuary setting adds plenty of good atmosphere. And it’s helped by the eerie use of light and shadows and some standout practical effects. But the story is plagued by overwritten and sometimes confusing exposition that muddies as much as it reveals. And while much of what we see desperately needs explaining, the info dumps often stymie the suspense.

The same can be said for Rebecca’s clumsily handled backstory. It’s thrown together in pieces, all in an effort to feed an on-the-nose metaphor that becomes too obvious to be effective. Alcoholism and personal loss are worthwhile subjects, and Holland does her best to make them feel central to Rebecca’s story. But they come across as pieces that don’t always fit with the rest of the movie.

“The Mortuary Assistant” starts off with a lot of promise, and you can see all the ingredients for a wickedly entertaining chiller. It certainly has the commitment in its star Willa Holland and the technical know-how from director Jeremiah Kipp. But the too frequent “Let me explain” moments bog things down while the ‘dream versus reality’ aspect grows more repetitive than revelatory. It all undermines the movie’s ambition and leaves us with an experience that can’t quite match the strength of its source material.

VERDICT – 2 STARS

The pre-release reactions haven’t been kind to “Mercy”, the latest film from screenlife innovator Timur Bekmambetov. The critical shalacking it’s getting is especially surprising considering the star power of the movie’s two leads, Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson. Both are talented and charismatic performers who almost always make whatever movie they are in better.

The good news is “Mercy” isn’t nearly the unmitigated disaster it has been made out to be. It’s an easily digestible science-fiction thriller that doesn’t require much from its audience. It seems well enough aware of its own outlandishness, yet it takes itself just serious enough that we do too. It results in a movie that’s about as entertaining as it is preposterous.

But that’s not to say “Mercy” is a great movie or even a memorable one. It’s built around a silly premise that seeks to explore both the potential for good and the dangers of modern technology. Unfortunately its treatment is surface-level at best. Significantly worse is the script which frantically tells a story that hinges on an endless array of conveniences and contrivances. And a late, seemingly random twist only adds to the silliness.

Set in 2029, the movie opens with robbery-homicide detective Chris Raven (Pratt) waking up in a room, strapped to a chair, and alone with Judge Maddox (Ferguson), an artificial intelligence adjudicator for the Mercy Court program. An exposition-heavy first act hurriedly establishes what the Mercy Court is and Raven’s connection to it. Essentially, the Mercy Count is a relatively new way of “quickly and efficiently” judging crimes. It was created to help clean up the crime-ridden Los Angeles, and Raven was one of its biggest proponents.

Here’s how it works: Due to substantial evidence, the accused are assumed guilty and forced to appear before an AI judge where they are given 90 minutes to bring their guilt probability down to 92%. To prove their innocence they’re granted access to a vast amount of digital data gathered through internet trails, social media accounts, surveillance cameras, cell phones, etc. If they fail to reach the threshold by the time the 90 minutes runs out, they will be executed on the spot.

So why is Detective Raven there? It turns out he has been found guilty of brutally murdering his wife Nicole (Annabelle Wallis) earlier that morning. Overwhelming evidence against him has set his guilt probability to 97.5%. Yet while the events of the last several hours are hazy to him, Chris is sure he didn’t kill his wife. So he begins making his case to Judge Maddox, employing the help of partner Jaq (Kali Reis), his close friend Rob (Chris Sullivan), and his daughter Britt (Kylie Rogers). What he uncovers sends the film careening down an unexpected path.

Most of the story is told using a blend of screenlife and traditional drama. After rushing us through the setup, Bekmambetov slows things down just a tad to let his mystery unfold. Yet even it feels pushed along faster than necessary. Chris turns into a digital super sleuth, parsing through data at lightning speed and making out-of-the-blue connections that often don’t make sense. To its credit, the film holds your interest throughout. But it seems like there is much missing in the buildup and in how it all plays out.

Surprisingly the action really ramps up in the final act as the story’s far-fetched twist opens the way to a far-fetched action sequence. And maybe I had succumbed to the craziness, but the bonkers finish was a lot of fun. Absurd and underdeveloped, but fun nonetheless. And that describes “Mercy” as a whole. The blueprint is there for something a lot better than what we get. It’s not without entertainment value. But the untapped potential leaves us thinking more about what might have been.

VERDICT – 2.5 STARS

Timothée Chalamet has been doing some incredible work lately. If you don’t believe me, just ask him. Chalamet lets it fly in his latest feature “Marty Supreme”, a whirlwind dramedy from director and co-writer Josh Safdie. It’s a movie where everything revolves around Chalamet’s full-throttle performance – a frenetic turn that sees the 29-year-old star working hard to keep up with his director’s furious pacing.

“Marty Supreme” is fueled by a chaotic energy that keeps us glued to every wild, unpredictable moment. At the same time, that very manic propulsion rarely slows down enough for Chalamet to find the humanity in his character. Make no mistake, his performance is electric. But the character goes from borderline charming in his arrogance and self-absorption to utterly loathsome and insufferable. It’s only at the very end that we get a different shade of him, but by then it’s too late to matter.

Chalamet plays 23-year-old Marty Mauser, a character loosely inspired by American table tennis player Marty Reisman. Set in 1952, Marty is a scrawny, bespectacled New Yorker with an unquenchable confidence in his own perceived greatness. Marty sells shoes at his uncle’s shoe store, but he sees it as beneath him. Instead, he believes he’s destined to be on a Wheaties box as the best table tennis player in the world.

While Marty may be a tremendous table tennis player, it quickly becomes evident he’s a terrible person. In Marty’s world he is most important, and getting what he wants is all that matters, no matter who he crushes in the process. He’s a narcissist and a shameless self-promoter who uses people to his own advantage, whether they’re his mother, his best friend, or a young married woman named Rachel (Odessa A’zion) who’s carrying his baby. They’re all tools Marty uses to get what he wants.

The first leg of Marty’s run towards greatness begins in London at the table tennis British Open. There he sets his eye on the tournament favorite, Endo (Koto Kawaguchi), Japan’s table tennis champion. But Marty is never out of selling mode, and he begins shopping himself around as the next big thing. In the process he woos Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow), a retired actress trapped in an unhappy marriage to a wealthy businessman named Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary). Marty manages to get Kay in his bed, but doesn’t do as well getting money out of Milton.

After disappointment in London, Marty’s whole world becomes about getting to the World Championship in Tokyo. He spends the summer performing halftime acts for the Harlem Globetrotters. But he will need more money if he’s going to make the trip to Japan. And Marty shows he’s willing to do anything to make that happen, no matter how reckless, underhanded, or cruel it may be.

As Safdie ushers Marty from one rambunctious situation to another, his antics get more outrageous and treacherous. Yet as they do, a nagging question kept coming to mind. How can so many people (either emotionally or professionally) buy into such a glaringly obvious self-obsessed fraud? Clearly Safdie and his co-writer Ronald Bronstein want us to see Marty as a cunning salesman and a slick con artist. But too often characters fall for his manipulation in such ways that make them look like buffoons.

Perhaps the biggest casualties of this are the two key women in the story. A’zion gives a superb performance as possibly the only sympathetic character in a movie full of bad people. But the script strips her of any agency and turns her into a loyal puppy dog who will do anything Marty wants, no matter how horrible he treats her. Kay is just as maddening despite a terrific Gwyneth Paltrow turn. Her relationship with Marty is never convincing mainly because she too has to appear hapless for Marty to get what he wants.

Thankfully some of the blindness subsides later in the second half as a handful of characters catch on to Marty’s flagrant nonsense. It adds some welcomed tension and needed conflict to a story that moves so fast that we rarely get a moment to process things. Still, you can’t help but be drawn to the chaos as relayed through Safdie’s kinetic direction and Chalamet’s aggressive theatrics. It keeps us locked into every crazy turn the story takes. Yet it’s also a big reason Marty’s final act conversion doesn’t quite work. After over two hours of despicable actions, he needs more than the final ten minutes to earn our sympathy.

VERDICT – 3.5 STARS

Kelly Reichardt’s latest film “The Mastermind” just might be her very best. It’s a movie that highlights the filmmaker’s most noteworthy strength, namely the hushed realism that defines her perspective. It’s also a movie that includes her most frustrating habit which is her tendency of being observational to a fault. Yet without question, her strength outweigh the frustration in this mostly absorbing character study posing as a crime drama.

“The Mastermind” is the second 2025 film to feature a brilliantly understated Josh O’Connor lead performance (the other being “Rebuilding” – don’t miss that one). Here he plays James Blaine “J.B.” Mooney, an unemployed husband and father of two living in the sleepy Massachusetts suburb of Framingham. The story is set in 1970 with the growing discontent over the Vietnam War often playing out in the background. It’s a small detail that relays the pulse of the nation. But Reichardt also uses it as a larger scaled reflection of J.B.’s plight.

We first meet J.B. at the Framingham Museum of Art with his wife Terri (a wonderfully subdued Alana Haim) and their two sons, Tommy (Jasper Thompson) and Carl (Sterling Thompson). It looks like a fun family outing. But in reality J.B. is using their trip to case out the museum for a heist. In vintage Thomas Crown form, J.B. masterminds a full-proof plan and recruits other thieves to execute it. But when one gets cold feet, J.B. is forced to join Guy Hickey (Eli Glen) and Ronnie Gibson (Javion Allen) on the job.

To no surprise, the heist doesn’t go off as seamless as planned, but the trio does escape with four valuable Arthur Dove paintings. The three go their separate ways, with J.B. hiding the paintings until he can find a buyer. And this is where the bulk of the movie unfolds. Reichardt pulls inspiration from classic heist movies and the real-life 1972 Worcester Art Museum robbery in presenting the heist itself. But the job only takes up a small chunk of the movie.

Instead Reichardt is more interested in the aftermath which sees J.B. in way over his head. Warning signs were everywhere before they set foot into the museum. He has to con his mom into giving him money to fund the job. His driver bails on him the day before the heist. He even forgets his boys are out of school that day, forcing him to find a sitter. Yet he carries on – a sign of his bad judgment and self-delusion. But things only get worse after the heist. And the more things go awry, the more Reichardt’s genre reinvention surprises.

Reichardt offers more insight through J.B.’s bumpy family dynamic. We see he’s a disappointment to his pompous and locally prominent father, Bill (Bill Camp) but is secretly coddled, often financially, by his adoring mother, Sarah (Hope Davis). Meanwhile his wife Terri buries her frustrations the best she can. She knows her husband’s shortcomings yet silently serves as the backbone of the family, working a day job while managing the household. Haim isn’t given much to do but she conveys a lot in the moments she has. She impresses enough that I would watch a spin-off movie focused on her character alone.

Equally important is the evocative period design which masterfully recreates the rich textures of 1970 via the sharp eyes of production head Anthony Gasparro and costume genius Amy Roth. It’s all captured through the warmly lit lensing of Christopher Blauvelt. Together they paint a visually alluring canvas that vividly represents the period down to the smallest details – a station wagon’s roll-up rear window, the pull tab on a can of Pepsi, the plastic eggs that held L’eggs Pantyhose.

While most everything in “The Mastermind” clicks, there are a couple of instances where Reichardt’s tendency of overextending a scene comes into play. Studied fans may find purpose in these moments where others might see indulgence. But it’s a small gripe compared to the overall strength of Reichardt’s smart and savvy anti-heist film. From the presentation to the performances to Rob Mazurek’s jazz-fueled score, “The Mastermind” is a film that finds depth and meaning in the most ordinary corners of life. And I found myself hooked from the very start.

VERDICT – 4 STARS

Directed by Lasse Hallström and streaming exclusively on Prime Video, “The Map That Leads to You” is a globetrotting young adult romantic drama based on J.P. Monninger’s 2017 novel of the same name. The film is a starring vehicle for Madelyn Cline, a 27-year-old actress with genuine talent but who is still looking for the right movie to showcase it. Unfortunately this isn’t quite it, although it’s certainly not because of her performance.

Cline plays Heather, a young woman from Texas enjoying the final days of a European vacation with her two best friends, Connie (Sofia Wylie) and Amy (Madison Thompson). While on an overnight train trip to Barcelona, Heather meets Jack (KJ Apa), a free-spirited New Zealander who is off on his own adventure. His great grandfather was a soldier during World War II who kept a journal chronicling his time stationed in Europe. To honor him Jack is traveling from place to place, visiting the sites his great grandfather wrote about.

The two don’t immediately hit it off. But after Jack follows the three girls to a Barcelona night club he and Heather start to connect. After bouncing around to a few more locations, Heather ends up leaving her friends and joining Jack on his pilgrimage. In true movie romance fashion, sparks begin to fly and the two end up falling in love. But equally true to formula, their relationship hits a snag which threatens to bring their fairytale romance to a heartbreaking end.

I won’t give away the ending, but no one will be surprised at where the story goes. And unfortunately, the journey there doesn’t really amount to much. There is some decent chemistry between friends and lovers, and the picturesque scenery is pretty to look at. And there is the movie’s lightly treated theme of finding your true self through the prisms of old memories and new relationships. But finding that core meaning is a lot harder than it should be.

The film’s performances are solid throughout, especially from Cline who squeezes everything she can from a fairly derivative character on paper. She’s especially good with Apa, clicking well with his understated charm. Cline also has great chummy rapport with Wylie and Thompson. Sadly Heather’s two friends are mostly superfluous except as plot pieces. They are mostly there to say things the story needs to be said and to listen when the story needs Heather to say something.

The final act throws in one of those annoying yet chronic movie conflicts that could be solved with just a little communication. It sets up the story’s predictable finish that leaves an unfortunate Nicholas Sparks aftertaste. But to Hallström’s credit, he doesn’t go full schmaltz, and he leaves a little bit to our imaginations. That, along with Cline’s confident and capable performance, helps to make “The Map That Leads to You” easy to watch and digest. Streaming now on Prime Video.

VERDICT – 2 STARS